Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Occasionally principled thoughtless assholes

This past weekend Republicans had yet another get together
where they planned to figure out how to stop being a minority party
without, you know, actually changing the party in any meaningful way.
And I think it is important to remember that some of their great ideas
are really not going to work. Recently, I've been hearing this one,
"Never discuss rape." A better idea would be, "Pretend that you are for
abortion exceptions." As I've noted,
this is the real hateful position. But it continues to be the one that
comes off the least repellent. It just is the case that being an
abortion absolutist is going to get the Republicans into trouble.And this brings me to my general advice for Republicans, "It's the
policies, stupid." Last week, Bobby Jindal said that the Republicans had
to stop being the stupid party. But any party that takes advice about
how not to be stupid from a creationist who has done exorcisms
is in deep trouble. And it isn't just that the Republicans are the
party of stupid. They are also the party of hateful. Everywhere they
seem committed to have no principle to being anything but thoughtless
assholes. Except on abortion where their principled stands makes them
thoughtless assholes.It's getting old to note that the Republicans are talking around their
problems. And even I have been saying that eventually they will have to
take a look at their policies. But there are good reasons to resist such
a move. Traditionally, the Republicans have been pretty good at finding
a charismatic leader and going from there. It was only six years between
the humiliation of Nixon's resignation and the start of the Reagan
party. Now you could argue -- and I do -- that Reagan became president only
because Paul Volcker created a recession just as we were coming to the
1980 election. But there will always be such events that will give
Republicans hope.The Republicans will have to change their policies eventually. The
demographic shift is too extreme. So they are bound to do worse and
worse in the coming decade. But eventually, they will figure out a way
to get Latinos to resent African-Americans. Or something. But that will
happen. And the price they'll pay will be giving in on little things.
Like immigration reform, which their primary constituency (the rich) want anyway.(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)